Saturday, November 22, 2014

Emma Hepperman was suspected to have murdered up to six
husbands, a mother-in-law, possibly a daughter, and to have poisoned a
step-daughter, who survived due to diagnosis following her father’s death. Newspapers spell the name in two ways. The spelling with two n's is correct.

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FULL TEXT: St. Charles, Mo., June 4 – Mrs. Emma Sarana
Hepperman, who was married seven times, was charged in a warrant today with
murder by poison of her last husband, Tony Hepperman, whom she met through an
advertisement for a position as a housekeeper.

The warrant was issued by Justice of the Peace Gus Temme
after a coroner’s jury had returned a verdict stating that Hepperman,
53-year-old farmer, had been poisoned. He died six weeks after his marriage.

In a deposition read at the inquest, Dr. J. L. Neubeiser,
who treated Hepperman at a hospital here, said the farmer made “a ‘dying
declaration’ that he believed his wife had poisoned him.”

A short, heavy-set woman with gray hair, Mrs. Hepperman, 46,
has exhumed several days ago and the vital organs were examined in the
laboratory of the state highway patrol at Jefferson City, Schneider, 56, a
farmer living near St. Peter’s, Mo., died last September 19 after being ill two
days.

FULL TEXT: A Franklin County jury found Emma Heppermann of
St. Charles County guilty of poisoner her punishment at life punishment. Judge
Breuer gave the case to the jury Thursday evening shortly before six o’clock
but no verdict was returned until 11:30 Friday morning. Mrs. Heppermann was
found guilty on the first ballot taken by the jury, but it required nearly nine hours of balloting before her punishment was fixed, two jurors holding
out for the death penalty.

Mts. Heppermann was married seven times; two husbands
secured a divorce but the other five died under rather unusual circumstances. A
son of her sixth husband told a representative of the Tribune that his father
had the same “stomach trouble” as Tony Heppermann; that there was also a
“robbery” and that all circumstances of his father’s life with the defendant
had paralleled the incidents leading to Heppermann’s death.

Arguments for a new trial were presented before Judge Breuer
Thursday afternoon at two o’clock.

Early May 1940 – Ethel Hepperman, 12, step-daughter –
poisoned, survived May 28, May 28, 1940 – Tony Hepperman, 53, 7th
husband; St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Charles.; had been married 6 weeks (Emma
was 46)

May 29, 1940 – Emma arrested

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Notes based on the research of Marsha Corley:

OVERVIEW: Emma Hepperman, 46, was arrested the day after her
53-year-old seventh husband, Tony Hepperman, died in St. Joseph’s Hospital in
St. Charles, Missouri. They had been married only five months.

She was born in 1883 and claimed she was married to her
first husband at the tender age of 14 and had twelve children from that
marriage, yet no records have been found that would support her claim. Charles
Schwack died in 1925 and Emma went hog-wild from then on in the marriage
department, picking up six additional spouses, four others of whom died in her
home, and, according to her, two who divorced her.

After arsenic had been found in the blood of the deceased
Tony Hepperman it was discovered that 12-year-old step-daughter Ethel Hepperman
who had been ill for weeks had also been poisoned. Investigation brought out
the facts of her busy matrimonial career involving spousal suspicious as well
as ordinary seeming (at the time) deaths, including a daughter from her first
marriage and a mother-in-law.

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EXCERPT 1: At the trial for the murder of Tony Hepperman
Alphonse Schneider, brother of husband number six:“She told me three times she wanted to kill
me,” he testified. “One day, in the midst of a quarrel, she said she wanted to
cook me some soup.” Schneider leaned close to the jury and said, “I sure am
glad I didn’t eat any of that soup.”

***

EXCERPT 2: Mrs. Eagan [daughter of Tony Hepperman] said that on the Friday before her dad’s
death he told her his wife had talked him into the notion of selling the farm
and getting away as everyone was butting into their business.

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EXCERPT 3: Inquest Testimony: The oldest daughter said that
after her father was brought to the hospital he told her that when he was in
St. Louis the Sunday evening his wife brought him coffee with the poison in it
and also water with the same stuff in it but he refused. “She sat at my
bedside, waiting for me to die,” the victim told his daughter. Shortly after
that the officers came and took the woman away. [“Startling Evidence At Inquest
Into Death Of Hepperman Brother Was Suspicious Of Woman’s Actions - Prosecuting
Atty. Dyer Announced First Degree Murder Charges Would Be Filed,” St. Charles
Weekly Cosmos-Monitor (St. Charles, Mo,), Jun. 5, 1940; quoted in e-book]

***

EXCERPT 4: Inquest Testimony of Steve Hepperman, Tony’s
brother: “When got back wheeled him on a chair to his bed, and he looked at me
and he said: ‘My God who would have thought she would poison me,’ and he asked
me, ‘do you think why would she want to poison me I was so good to her?’ He
said ‘where is she?’ and I said ‘in jail.’ He said ‘then keep the dam old bitch
there.’” [“Startling Evidence At Inquest Into Death Of Hepperman Brother Was
Suspicious Of Woman’s Actions - Prosecuting Atty. Dyer Announced First Degree
Murder Charges Would Be Filed,” St. Charles Weekly Cosmos-Monitor (St. Charles,
Mo,), Jun. 5, 1940; quoted in e-book]

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EXCERPT 5: Trial: Witnesses for the State yesterday included
Steve Heppermann, brother of Tony and Mrs. Rosie Simpson, Negro laundress, who
worked occasionally for the Heppermans. The brother testified that four days
before his death his brother had known he was poisoned. Mrs. Simpson testified
that Mrs. Hepperman told her shortly before Hepperman’s death, “Hep has $1,000
and I’m going to get it.”

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EXCERPT 6: Mrs. Emma S. Hepperman, seven times married woman,
was found guilty by a jury of twelve men in the circuit court of Union, shortly
before noon today and was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment in the
Missouri penitentiary. The verdict was returned after deliberation of
nine hours. Three ballots were necessary before her punishment was fixed. Two of
the jurors held out for the death penalty on the first vote while one voted for
death the second time. The third ballot was unanimous for life.